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November 10, 2009

Reflections for President Obama and His Peers.

Dear President Obama,

I want to offer you as well as your peers some reflections I have regarding our struggles with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. I would like to focus on two interrelated roots to the problem. The first has to do with the recruitment of young boys of largely poor families. The second is the systematic destruction of educational opportunities for young women. How are these two things interrelated and why are these things the roots of the problem? By nature mothers strive to nurture and care for their children. If a mother cannot provide for her babies then they become lost children, and soon enough desperate young adults. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda prey on this situation. They offer food, shelter, and monetary support to these children and their families. Denying women education certainly perpetuates the cycle of helplessness that many families face. To me the answer is clear- help support, protect, and defend the education of women and let nature do the rest.

Although this is not a strategy that addresses the current situation and will take time to have a lasting effect, with every new word a young girl learns, hope spreads its sweeping wings. The struggle between theocracy and secularism has been going on for thousands of years and you will not turn it around by the next 4 or 8 years. There will be no shortage of opportunists that will use religion, fear, and force to satisfy their own beliefs and objectives. What you and your peers need to do is put a system in place- one that outlasts you and the current militant jihadists. This system you must build needs to focus on educating women in this region of the world. This system needs to provide support to poor families today so their children are not victims of a movement that prey on the weak, the poor, and the uneducated. This system needs to be a clearly stated and bold in vision- a global G.I. Bill for women. This system will give greater purpose to the missions our men and women in uniform so bravely perform.

There is something deeper that needs to be touched on and this is not only for the President. This struggle between the militant jihadists and the world they denounce is also fed by many of us. These young boys are initially motivated to join this movement because they are hungry and poor. They become suicide bombers not "God willing" as they say but because our collective present world does not provide ample space for this natural human aspiration to reach beyond the here and now. Suffering children, starving children, abused children, and soldier children are testaments to the fact that our world is suffering from dis-ease. We all need to arm ourselves with a better knowledge and understanding of our collective pasts and paths crossed that join us in the present state of affairs and be vigilant to the shape of our collective future. The modern world, this present we all share, is a giant river who's tributaries run rapid from all of our past beliefs and aspirations towards a future that may become so polluted it will no longer be safe for our children to drink and thrive from. We must take responsibility of our contribution to the damages done not for the sake of our nation, but for the sake of our humanity. We owe it to each other.

Learn a new word today maybe one that's old and in a language you don't know- imagine and act towards a better world. Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi.